Don’t give in to despair.
She recalled the intensity of those dark eyes boring into her own. He had known in an instant that the policewoman had identified him.
Would he already have fled the country, she wondered? Or, a more hideous thought, was he going to come back for her?
CHAPTER 38
The school bell rang out and several hundred pairs of feet clattered up stairs and through corridors, filling the class-rooms with a more subdued chatter now that they were in the presence of their form teachers. Maggie Lorimer looked up and smiled as her sixth years trooped in, some of them yawning as they slumped into their places. There was only one week left until half term and this lot looked as though they needed the break. There was going to be a Valentine’s disco for the junior school, something that had elicited a lot of excitement from her first years, but this lot were much too sophisticated for that sort of thing, she thought with a pang as she ticked off their names on her register.
Looking around the room, Maggie saw young men and women, poised to fly off to new beginnings in just a few short months. She’d known most of them as eager twelve-year-olds, kids who had shared so much of their lives with their form teacher, some of them treating her almost as a surrogate mum. Would any of the girls come back to visit once their school days were over? Or would they forget all about Mrs Lorimer and the secrets they had told her, the boys they’d cried over? She didn’t expect the boys to keep in touch. Boys usually didn’t and that was the way it was.
As the bell rang once again for the start of the first lesson, Maggie’s sixth years left the room, some giving her a tired smile and a nod, acknowledging the beginning of another school week. Maggie brightened and smiled back. It was as though they were suddenly aware of her as a person rather than as a teacher. Well, that was life, wasn’t it? The kids came and went, hopefully better equipped to face the big, bad world, and then a new lot would arrive after the summer, kids who were at present the big boys and girls of primary seven but who would be small fry all over again once they’d entered the gates of Muirpark Secondary.
Maggie’s smile deepened. Life wasn’t too bad, was it? Tomorrow she would have the pleasure of surprising her husband for his birthday. Wednesday might see her far more tired and jaded than her sixth years on a Monday morning but it was going to be well worth it to see Bill’s face when the lights went up and he saw all his friends there in the restaurant. She shivered suddenly. He would like it, wouldn’t he? And surely nothing would happen to spoil the evening?
The sound of the boot opening woke Barbara from a confused dream where she was being held underwater. Her eyes flew open, blinking against the artificial light but just at that moment the boot slammed shut and she was confined to darkness once more.
As the noise of the engine began Barbara could hear another sound, a grating metallic hum that could only be the garage shutters sliding upwards. Then her whole body was jolted sideways as the car turned and moved off.
Heart thumping, Barbara struggled against her bonds once again, panic lending her renewed strength. If she could only get her hands free, reach the mobile phone that was zipped inside her man-sized coat pocket then maybe someone would come to her rescue.
The big man had secured her wrists with plastic binding tapes, the sort that were used for packing newspapers or for thieves getting into cars, and the more Barbara had struggled against them the deeper they had cut into her flesh. Now she could feel the slipperiness of blood making further struggle useless. Tears began to roll down the policewoman’s face. If she wasn’t so bloody fat, then perhaps she’d have been able to slither out of her bonds. A fleeting memory of Diana’s slim fingers came to her mind and the tears fell hotly against her cheeks. Where was the woman now? Had she been missed over the weekend or had Diana Yeats consigned Barbara to the past as they all did eventually?
‘Tom, where’s Knox?’
‘Don’t know. Haven’t seen her this morning.’
‘But she’s always in early.’
‘Well, you know the drill. Give her a call on